It was great actually. The oldest is right at that age of make believe where you don't need anything to play other than a wide open space for lots of running and falling over dead. During one of his make believe escapades, he raced out of the jungle gym yelling, "Quick, we've got to get away from the bad guys!" Another little boy who was probably around the same age looked at his mom with sudden anxiety: "Bad guys?" he whimpered. "No, no," I looked at the mother apologetically, "these are just pretend." The little boy looked relieved. Meanwhile my friend's son had fallen over "dead" in the dirt.
I was delighted to see that someone in the world still only needs their imagination and their pointer finger (for a gun, of course) in order to enjoy themselves. I so rarely see that anymore, which is probably because I don't spend a lot of time with children that age, but also because of the evil television. I say that jokingly. I love TV and movies, especially good TV and movies. I'm really not super anti-TV. I'm just anti-only-TV.
I've been rereading the Anne of Green Gables series and Anne has imagination to spare. She has so much imagination that it makes me feel like a dull lump of reality-focused clay. Not only do I want "kids these days" to be more like Anne, I want to be more like Anne.
Why does Anne have so much imagination and I seem to have so little? What can I do to be more imaginative? After considering this for some time, I decided that Anne's main inspirations for imagination include people, books or poems, and nature.
Not even the Anne girl can just imagine things out of thin air. She needs a spark, some ideas rolling around in her head to begin with. My little friend on the playground needed to read stories about bad guys in order to make up his own. As Tozer pointed out, "We learn by using what we already know as a bridge, over which we pass to the unknown. It is not possible for the mind to crash suddenly past the familiar into the unfamiliar." I would add that we imagine by using what we already know as a bridge from the real to the unreal. For Anne, the starting point for her imagination is always a combination of people, stories, and nature.
These are often things that we don't let into our lives. I live in an apartment complex, where my view of the sky is blocked by a large hotel and a call center. When I drive I listen to music or the radio, when I'm bored I look at my phone (there's an app for boredom). I do read a substantial amount, to be fair, but I know lots people don't have the time. But Anne had the time. Anne looked at the sky, not her phone; Anne looked at people and if she didn't talk to them, she imagined things about them; if she did talk to them, then she imagined things about them later based on what they had said. I'm going to try to be more like Anne in the hopes of resurrecting my imagination.
So this is my exhortation: Feed your imagination, lest it die. Give it whatever it needs: people, books, and nature, or stranger fare than these. It is imperative that we do this -- otherwise we will be left scared on the jungle gym while others fly by us in a rush of enthusiasm for things unseen.
What sparks your imagination?
What a brave mom you are! Three kids under five at the park! Yay you!
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to think about how we use our imaginations now as adults. I'm not so sure that's it that we never use them--it's perhaps more that we never or rarely get to use them for fun. I know I'm good at imagining all the awful things that can happen every day. You know, death, dismemberment, difficult social interactions, spiders crawling all over--that sort of thing. But what we really want is to be four again and use our imagination to escape the bad guys that can't really hurt us. It's part of what makes playing with kids so much fun and so magical. You can act the fool again even in your thirties and use your imagination to foil the foe with impunity.
And that's part of the charm of reading too. Our imaginations are active when we read--establishing ourselves in that author's world, relating to characters, wondering what will happen next, imagining how the ending or another aspect could have been different. And as adults, we have so much more experience to build from and bring to books and TV and movies. It probably helps make our imaginations more active than we realize.
And as a parent and spouse, there's lots of imaginings. It's less of the "Lake of Shining Waters" variety and more of the putting yourself in their shoes type of thing; but it's still there.
And too, kids want the craziest stories. And you know what they like and you play to your audience. I had to really make my imagination work these past two weeks. The kids have been terribly sick. Rose wanted a story that was new. So while I plied her with soup, I made up a story about the Land of Green where she met King Fred and Queen Nobody (the names of her stuffed frogs). She had inadvertently awakened Baby Somebody (also a stuffed frog), but by way of apology had sung the baby frog to sleep. The Queen was touched and had the magical ability to sense that Rose was a kindred spirit to frogs--that she truly loves them from her heart and not just because the law of the Land of Green required kindness to frogs. So the Queen and King made Rose the Princess of Frogs for she would love frogs no matter how old she got and she skipped home very quietly singing about the beauty of green of and frogs.
Rose loved that so much, she cried. It's sort of amazing what one can make up when put on the spot. And I obviously stole from Anne and who knows what all else.
So, then Kate wanted a story about pink and horses and not like Rose's. And that was harder. Not least of which is the problem that Kate's imagination is so active, and she's constantly telling herself stories all the time that then she'll edit my stories as I go along. "No, no, Mom, make the horse say this and then gallop, not trot. Oh and it should have pink ribbons in its mane that flow in the wind. And what tones are in the sky now?" My poor brain was tired. I had to leave Kate's story with a cliff hanger or those two would never have gone to bed (pssst...a beagle is what is in the bushes ready to spring onto the horse's back and join her and the frog on their adventures).
So, besides the usual doom and gloom that usually rattles around in my wacky head, my imagination has been getting these kinds of strange workouts. I often think that my girls made my imagination better and brighter. :)
And by the way, I finally decided what to read after the Count of Monte Cristo. I'm about halfway through THE PROFESSOR by Charlotte Bronte. :)
I love those stories! So adorable. I also spend a lot of my time imagining horrible, horrible things happening. It's sort-of a sad use of imagination and I wish I spent less time imagining terrible things happening and more time imagining wonderful things happening! I think you are right though: kids really do give your imagination a workout, from playing in the park, to telling stories, to trying to keep yourself entertained while you keep them entertained! It's one of the best things about having (or being around) kids, I think!
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